Earnings put AI spending next to AI usage

Spending and usage differ in speed

Three stories from the last day put the cost of AI next to the demand for it, and the two do not line up neatly. We can read them side by side without forcing a single explanation onto them.

Bonds to support the buildout

Microsoft announced plans to raise $25 billion in bonds to support its infrastructure expansion, and management is targeting $170 billion in 2026 capital expenditures to meet heavy demand from artificial intelligence labs Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as other clients. Microsoft reported positive free cash flow, which differentiates it from Alphabet, whose cash flow was negative for the second quarter in a row, and Amazon reported negative free cash flow on Thursday.

Searches are up, revenue lags

Alphabet's search and other revenue grew 12% from a year ago to roughly $63 billion, but came in below estimates for the second straight quarter, while Google said search query growth was the strongest it has been in five years. The stock fell about 13% on Thursday, the steepest drop on record.

Agent orders are still small

DoorDash revealed during its third-quarter earnings call that it has only seen "several hundred" orders from third-party agents, and Xu said it is seeing "maybe several hundred orders in total from some of these third-party agents," while TechCrunch notes the company's 2025 report put its average at 3 million deliveries daily. Xu mentioned that users are still predominantly placing orders through DoorDash's app.

Keep two columns when you read

If you work in a bank, a lender or a payments firm, a useful habit for the next round of earnings is to keep two columns, one for what is being spent and one for what customers are visibly doing. Where the second column is still thin, we can say that plainly, and it is a fair answer to give a client who asks.